


La Chanson

by yonderdarling



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Gratuitous French, Hand Jobs, M/M, Multi, Oral Sex, Post-World War II, Semi-Public Sex, The Vault (Doctor Who)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-27
Updated: 2020-02-27
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:54:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22919533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yonderdarling/pseuds/yonderdarling
Summary: Making your way in the world today takes everything you've got. Especially when Missy's kicked you out of the Vault....so, sometimes you want to go where a tall, dark stranger knows your name.
Relationships: Doctor/Master, The Doctor/The Master (Doctor Who), Twelfth Doctor/Missy, Twelfth Doctor/The Master (Dhawan)
Comments: 24
Kudos: 92





	La Chanson

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Cactusepique](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cactusepique/gifts).



> A gift for Yveline, who is a wonderful friend and creative soul that I adore. Sorry about the French babe. 
> 
> Summary is a part parody of the theme to Cheers. I love Cheers.
> 
> That said, I'd suggest putting some Édith Piaf on while you read this.

  
It’s a very smoky bar, which works with his mood. His nose stings as he orders a strong double whisky and sits to think about whether it’d be ethically alright to leave Missy in the Vault by herself for a few months with a copy of _What We Owe To Each Other_ and see what happened come Christmas.  
  
That’s a bad idea. He’ll leave her for the night, sure, and he’ll stay here. The bar, half-full and quiet as men nurse their beers and take stock of themselves as the weekend rolls in, seems a much safer option than the TARDIS, only a five minute walk from the Vault doors.  
  
“Can I get you another?” The bartender, John, asks. “Only usually you take an hour on those.”  
  
The Doctor looks at his empty glass. “Have you got the stock?”  
  
“For you, Doctor? Sure.”  
  
“Why not,” says the Doctor. “How do you get it?”  
  
“I know someone down in rationing,” says John. “In fact, it’s the lad over there on billiards. Wife giving you trouble?”  
  
Another reason not to give Missy another thick philosophy text; she’d hoofed _Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire_ at him that morning and it had cut him on the nose. That said, he’d thrown it right back and she’d come at him, shouting at him, and then grabbed him and kissed him so hard and for so long they both nearly passed out.  
  
That he’d then shoved her into an armchair (they really needed to get more of those, Missy kept taking them to bits and trying to reassemble them into weapons or escape devices) and left the Vault, furious and bleeding and very, very turned on, was very inconvenient. He and the Master had fucked in some pretty ethically grey situations (following the death of Adric, following the death of River, right after the Master had destroyed Japan but then he’d undone that, so was it really a bad thing?) (yes). And he wasn’t going to go down that path again.  
  
He wasn’t going to even sleep (just sleep, which he missed, there was nothing like sleeping beside another Time Lord, and nothing like sleeping beside a specific Time Lord) beside her, and he’d definitely not sleep with her either. He just really, really wanted to. He and Missy (and any iteration of her) knew each others bodies down to the bone, the marrow, the atom, the soul. He ached for her, and she was always - right there. And he couldn’t.  
  
“Yes, wife problems,” says the Doctor, realising he’s not spoken for about five minutes. “Do you - “  
  
“No, but I do have pork knuckles.”  
  
“I’m a vegetarian.”  
  
“Each to their own,” says John, and tops up the Doctor’s drink again. “Ey, Charlie da Gaul, how about something a bit more cheerful than that French shit?”  
  
The broad-shouldered man sitting at the piano, doesn’t turn around and continues to play what is probably an Edith Piaf song, but there’s been so many depressing songs out of Europe since the war ended, they’ve all blurred together. The Doctor twists on his barstool and watches the man’s right hand pressing on the keys. The rest of the man is hidden under a large, navy coat.   
  
“Maybe I should get Missy a piano,” he says to his whiskey. “She’s my - yeah, sure, that’s my wife.”  
  
“Don’t think they’re going to be making pianos right now,” John says. “I know a man who can get you an accordion.”  
  
“Don’t want an accordion. Thanks, though.”  
  
The man at the piano winds up his song, to a smatter of applause. “Right. John,” the man says, and turns on the piano bench. “You get one request for non-French shit.”  
  
The man looks Indian or Pakistani - though it’s 1946 so technically, Pakistan doesn’t exist - but he has a very slight French accent. He’s probably French.   
  
“Brandy first, though,” the man says, and stands, crosses to the bar. He’s wearing the wide-legged trousers of a French military officer, and the jacket of an officer too, and now the Doctor looks, the hat on the top of the piano has the peak and crest of a French officer. Yes, almost certainly French. “Do you have any more of the 1923?”  
  
The Doctor’s probably had more whiskey than he realises, or a concussion from his Potter to the face. “What the hell are you doing here?”  
  
The man looks at him, eyebrows raised, the corner of his mouth twitching. “Nothing gets past you, does it? I’ve misestimated you this time.”  
  
“Yes,” says the Doctor, and points at the man’s shoulder stripes. “What’s a French military officer doing in a bar in Bristol?”  
  
The man smiles, properly, very toothily, and he has a very nice mouth, and then he thanks John the bartender when John gives him a generous glass of brandy. The man has nice hair. It’s all black and silky. Missy’s got nice hair, too.   
  
“I was in London for a meeting, and I’ve gotten the train here to see my older sister. She married an Englishman and I haven’t seen her since 1937. Been stuck out in - you can imagine.”  
  
Okay, now he feels bad. “Well, now you’ve made me feel awkward,” says the Doctor. “Let me pay for your drink.”  
  
“Well, that’s very generous of you,” says the man. “She’s working though, down at the university until midnight.”  
  
“I work at the university,” says the Doctor.  
  
“Oh do you now?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“You a cleaner?”  
  
The Doctor chuckles. “No, I’m a professor of physics.”  
  
“Fascinating. You must be very intelligent.”  
  
“I don’t mean to brag,” the Doctor says, and then, thanks to the TARDIS, happy he’s out of the Vault out of Missy’s reach, swaps to French. “But yes, I’m a genius through and through, and wasting my time with the likes of you.”  
  
“Charming,” the man replies. “I’m Olivier, by the way. Olivier…Sinclair.”  
  
“I’m the Doctor,” The Doctor says, relieved to not have to be another John in this bar. He takes another look at Olivier’s shoulder. “Chef de Bataillon Sinclair, what brought you to London?”  
  
Olivier Sinclair smiles, and he has got - a very nice smile. “Can you keep a secret, Doctor?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“As can I.”  
  
They both drink quietly for a few minutes, then someone taps Sinclair on the shoulder, one of the boozy regulars.  
  
“You don’t know the _Chatanooga Choo Choo_ , do ya?”   
  
Olivier doesn’t look around. “Piss off,” he says.  
  
“What about _Cliffs of Dover_?” says the man, who has one arm.  
  
“John said no more sad songs.”  
  
“Fuck you, John,” says the man, and walks off.   
  
There’s a moment of awkwardness, and then Olivier finishes his drink. “Same again, thanks,” he says to John, then swaps to French. “So, what brings you to this bar on this night?”  
  
“My wife - “ the Doctor says. “Well, the woman I live with, she’s pissed.”  
  
“Is she a professor too?”  
  
The Doctor chuckles to himself. “Not in this day and age. She could be though, she could be a lot of things. She could be - anyway.”  
  
“I’m sure.”  
  
“Though right now, she’s a piece of work who needs to learn her fucking manners. Same again, John,” says the Doctor, and even though it comes out as a quite slurred, “Une recharge, s'il vous plaît,” John’s been a bartender long enough to know what most of his customers want regardless of how slurred or foreign their speech is.  
  
The one-armed man reappears. “Come on mate, you’re not bad. One more? John - I like that sad French shit. I was at Dunkirk, you know.”  
  
John nods. “Fine, if you don’t mind?”  
  
Olivier knocks back the half-empty glass in his hand. “Fine. That one’s free though, I didn’t study at the Sorbonne to play for stoned businessmen.”  
  
“And I didn’t study at Cambridge to serve ‘em, but here we both are,” says John, and the Doctor snorts. “That’s Paul, by the way. He was in the navy till his arm got blown off.”  
  
“Explains why he can’t play his own damn piano,” says Olivier, getting up. “Doctor, would you care to accompany me?”  
  
“I can’t play piano.”  
  
“Yes you can.”  
  
“Well, I can’t play it well.”  
  
Still, Olivier Sinclair has a very nice smile and a very nice uniform (he doesn’t care for armies, as everyone well knows, but when you’ve had to dress twelve different bodies, you recognise good tailoring when you see it. Not to mention - Missy is very well-tailored. Extremely.) and look. It’s a nice uniform. Can’t he just appreciate an aesthetic, for five fucking minutes?  
  
He’s sitting on the piano bench with Olivier. When did this happen?  
  
Olivier shuffles on the bench, settles in and places his well-kept hands on the keys, and presses through a few chords. “He likes that sad French shit,” he murmurs, and the Doctor laughs. “Do you like the sad French shit also, Doctor?”  
  
“I wouldn’t call it sad French shit per se, but I’ll listen to anything,” says the Doctor.  
  
“Hm.”  
  
Olivier moves through a few more chords, then makes his decision. As he leans over the keys, his dark hair falls over his forehead like a silky curtain.He begins to play, something that sounds very Piaf-y, and that’s confirmed when the man begins to sing, in a husky voice —   
  
_“Je suis née, Passage de la Bonne Graine_  
 _J’en ai pris de la graine, et pour longtemps_  
 _Je travaille comme un chien toute la semaine…”_  
  
The Doctor lied; he does know a bit of piano and he’s able to add a few flourishes to Olivier’s rendition as he moves into the chorus. Olivier continues to sing, and it’s warm and rough, and familiar -   
  
_“Je m’en fous pas mal_  
 _Y peut m’arriver n’importe quoi_  
 _Je m’en fous pas mal_  
 _J’ai mon dimanche qui est à moi_  
 _C’est peut-être banal_  
 _Mais ce que les gens pensent de vous_  
 _Ça m’est égal!”_  
  
And then, he sits, and listens as Olivier plays his entire way through the song. The bar is quiet for a moment once he finishes, and then Paul slams his remaining hand down on the bar.  
  
“Nicely done,” he says. “You’re not bad for a frog.”  
  
“And you’re not bad for a skivvy,” Olivier says, over his shoulder. He turns back to the keys. “Doctor.”  
  
“Hm?”  
  
“Would you like to walk with me to the university? If we’re both going that way?”  
  
“I would.”  
  
“Are you going my way?”  
  
It’s 1946, and John is suddenly eyeing them both from behind the bar, and Paul’s gone quiet and now looks sort of angry (bit of a hypocrite, you know what they say about the navy), but the Doctor says yes anyway, because humans are banana brains and after a war that just killed 75 million people, you’d think they’d reconsider their prejudices.   
  
They gather their coats and Olivier puts his leather gloves and cap on before holding the door open for the Doctor. They head home through misty streets and lanes which are still smouldering from bomb-damage, their arms brushing as they stroll.   
  
“Where are you meeting your sister?”  
  
“She’ll find me, I’m sure.”  
  
“Alright.”  
  
Somehow. They’re at the entrance to the basement room that holds the Vault. The Doctor blinks. Maybe he’s drunker then he realised. There’s a click, as Olivier takes a lighter out of his pocket and uses it to light a cigarette. He inhales deeply, offers it to the Doctor, who takes it and takes a long drag. Yes, he is much drunker than he realised.  
  
“How did we end up here?” The Doctor asks.  
  
“I was following you,” says Olivier. “What, do you keep your wife down there?”  
  
“No, down there….no, it’s off-limits.”  
  
“What’s down there?”  
  
The Doctor passes the cigarette back. No, Bletchley Park is miles away and hasn’t been declassified yet, that won’t do. He owes Alan Turing money, besides.“It’s uh - an art installation.”  
  
“An off-limits art-installation. And I thought the English were dull.”  
  
“I’m Scottish. Ish.”  
  
“I never said you were dull, my dear Doctor.”   
  
The Doctor studies Olivier’s profile, half in the dark, half-lit red by the end of his cigarette. “You like art?”  
  
“I’m French. Ish. We like beautiful, interesting things.”   
  
Olivier turns to face the Doctor, takes the cigarette out of his mouth and holds it to the Doctor’s lips. The Doctor takes it, inhales, then drops it to the ground and stamps it out. Olivier smirks, and it’s very attractive and heads down into the darkness of the basement and out of sight, his boot heels tapping on the stone steps. The Doctor follows.  
  
The Vault door looms above them both, the red and blue lock-lights shining true in the darkness.   
  
“Modern art, hm?” Olivier asks.  
  
“You should - you could say that,” the Doctor says.  
  
“Why is it down here?”  
  
“No one likes modern art.”  
  
“Is it structurally sound?” Olivier asks, and knocks on the door twice. The metal booms and the knocks echo around the small space. “Sounds solid.”  
  
The Doctor’s blood runs cold as he waits for Missy to respond, probably with another four-hour bashing-on-the-door session. Mercifully, she stays silent. He wonders if she’s listening.  
  
“Good,” says Olivier, and grabs the Doctor by his shoulders and shoves him against the Vault door. The bang echoes around the room. “Excellent.”  
  
Silent, listening for Missy and hearing nothing but blood rushing in his ears, the Doctor nods. Olivier pauses, their faces an inch apart, studying the Doctor with his dark eyes.   
  
“I like beautiful, interesting things,” Olivier says again, quiet, his breath against the Doctor’s lips. He tilts his head, narrows his eyes.He leans in close, his lips brushing the Doctor’s ear. “Ai-je votre attention mon cœurs?”  
  
“Yes,” the Doctor doesn’t manage to say, so he takes Olivier’s face and kisses him hard.  
  
Olivier makes a surprised, pleased noise, holding the Doctor’s hip in one hand, cupping the Doctor’s face with the other, the leather from his gloves warm and soft against his skin. There’s much less of a height difference with him than Missy, or even River and it’s a nice change, familiar and strange, to be kissing someone with stubble again. The last person he kissed (consensually) with a beard was - _no_ \-   
  
Olivier pulls back. “Are you okay?”  
  
“Yes, yes,” says the Doctor. “Just thinking about someone.”   
  
“Well, think about me, not her.”  
  
“It’s not always a her.”  
  
Olivier squeezes the Doctor’s hip, moves his hand back to squeeze his arse through his woolen trousers. “Clearly.”  
  
There’s more kissing, and it’s slow, and soft, and deep, and Olivier moves his thigh in-between the Doctor’s legs. The Doctor presses up against him, as Olivier’s gloved hand drifts down to the front of his trousers, presses against his half-hard cock.  
  
“You’re not as old as you look, Doctor,” he murmurs.  
  
“Young at hearts.”  
  
They kiss, Olivier crowding the Doctor up against the Vault door until he’s nearly flat against the metal, cold at his back, but he’s so warm, so crowded at the front. The Doctor drops his hands to Olivier’s waist, opens his coat, pulls at the other man’s clothes until he can rest his hands on the warm, soft skin below all of Olivier’s layers. He can feel Olivier’s cock, hard, pressing against his stomach. Perhaps he imagines it, but he thinks he can hear Missy on the other side of the door, listening, waiting, pressed against the metal like him, aching to be touched.   
  
“Are you going to suck my cock, Doctor?” Olivier asks, and grins when the Doctor nods. “Wonderful.” Olivier leans in, kisses him again, biting at his lower lip, just as Missy did before the Vault, when he’d let himself kiss her. “Wonderful.”  
  
“Wonderful,” the Doctor murmurs.   
  
He drops to his knees, the soles of his boots pressing flat against the Vault door.  
  
“Wait,” Olivier murmurs, and the Doctor looks up. “Can’t have you being uncomfortable.”  
  
Olivier shifts, so he’s the one pressed against the cold metal of the Vault door, and the Doctor shuffles across - it’s still uncomfortable, he’s kneeling on concrete after all - and that thought flies from his head when Olivier combs his gloved fingers through the Doctor’s hair.  
  
“It’s a mess,” Olivier says, smiling down at him.  
  
“It’s stylish,” the Doctor says. “A head ahead of its time.”  
  
He reaches up and undoes Olivier’s flies and pulls his cock out; it’s too dark to properly admire but it’s thick, a generous length, hard in his hand. The Doctor opens his mouth and, he’s out of practise but it comes back to him fast, the way he sucks it deep into his mouth, hollowing out his cheeks. He runs his tongue along the underside and feels a swell of pride as Olivier groans, twists his fingers in his hair.  
  
“Your wife’s a lucky woman,” Olivier murmurs.  
  
The Doctor takes him in deeper, using one of his hands to massage his balls, and Olivier makes a noise, low in his chest. On the other side of the door, he can imagine (or is she sending him these images?) Missy, sitting with her back to the door, taking in the sounds and scents and sensation through his eyes and her synapses? He’s so turned on it hurts, so Missy must know. She must, and then as if on cue, his vision swims blue as she takes a look through his eyes.

His mind is off-limits of course, she’s not meant to do this, but he’s not meant to suck off random French military officers on her doorstep (Vaultstep?) so he’ll let this one slide.  
  
“Fuck,” Olivier says, and grabs the Doctor under the chin.  
  
He brings the Doctor up to stand again, kisses him deeply. As he does so, he undoes the Doctor’s trousers and takes his hard cock in his gloved hand, stroking him gently.   
  
“Harder,” the Doctor says, and can hear Missy behind it too.   
  
Olivier smiles into his mouth and obliges. The Doctor groans, wraps his hand around Olivier’s cock and attempts to copy his movements as Olivier pants into his mouth.  
  
“Were you in the navy too?”  
  
“I can see why you’d think that,” the Doctor says, and gasps as Olivier tightens his grip.  
  
“You like that? You enjoying that?”  
  
The Doctor sucks in a breath. “Clearly,” he manages to say, and Olivier lifts one of his own hands to his mouth and pulls his glove off with his teeth. “I like the gloves.” He really likes the gloves.  
  
“Well, I want to feel you.”   
  
Olivier kisses him deeply, brushing their tongues together. He wraps the hand that’s still in a glove around the Doctor’s neck, resting his fingers on his pulse point. The Doctor presses their cocks together, shifts against him, and Olivier moans.   
  
“There’s other ways you can feel me,” the Doctor says, words he’d never even consider saying to Missy, but this isn’t Missy, and Olivier pulls back, grins at him and sinks to his knees in front of him. “Oh, fuck.”  
  
Olivier’s mouth around his cock, hot and tight and wet. He shifts his head and does something with his tongue that makes the Doctor swear again, and brace himself against the Vault door with his forearms. The Doctor drops one hand to Olivier’s hair and tangles his fingers in it, answering in kind when Olivier hums. Olivier shifts his head, takes the Doctor’s cock in deeper, and the Doctor finds himself thrusting into the man’s mouth, panting, blue tinging the corners of his vision as Missy watches and waits and feels what he’s feeling.  
  
He can almost see her shape, pressed up against the Vault door on the other side of the metal. She’s either loving this or loathing it, and either way she’ll get hers when he sees her again.  
  
“I’m - “ the Doctor realises, and tries to say, but Olivier just pats his hip with the gloved hand, and the Doctor swears, comes in Olivier’s mouth. He shudders, legs shaking, resting his forehead against his arms. “Fuck. Fuck.”  
  
Olivier swallows, moves so he’s sitting on the floor, and rests his temple against the Doctor’s hip. He breathes out, stroking the Doctor’s thigh gently. It takes a moment, but the Doctor pulls himself together, breathes in, breathes out. He keeps his hand in Olivier’s hair, stroking the soft strands.  
  
“Let me finish you,” the Doctor says, and thankfully Olivier stands rather than him having to move his shaking body back down to the floor.  
  
“With pleasure,” Olivier says, and kisses the Doctor on the mouth again as the Doctor takes his cock in his hand and begins to stroke him back to full hardness.  
  
It doesn’t take long, and soon Olivier is coming in the Doctor’s hand, dripping onto the front of the Doctor’s trousers.  
  
“I’m not sorry,” says Olivier, looking first at the mess, and then at the Doctor dead in the eye. “You’re paying for your own dry-cleaning.”  
  
The Doctor stares back, and then laughs, leans and kisses him again, moving along his stubbly jaw to bite his earlobe. Olivier cups the Doctor’s face, squints at him in the darkness and gives him a funny look. It’s a little sad, too.   
  
Olivier sighs, does up his pants and then Doctor’s. He leans across and presses their foreheads together.   
  
“I’m not coming back here,” he says suddenly. “You know, I wish I could, and I would, but I’m only here a few days.”  
  
“That’s alright,” says the Doctor, and clears his throat. “I wasn’t expecting - well, when I left the house this evening, I wasn’t expecting anything.”  
  
Olivier smiles, and then kisses the cut on the Doctor’s nose. There’s a little pain from the pressure, but it’s sweet all the time.  
  
“I would come back,” Olivier says, again, his English somehow clumsy for the first time. “I’d try.”  
  
Another kiss, longer, on the lips. Olivier steps back, leaving the Doctor to lean against the Vault door to watch as the other man puts his gloves and hat back on, button up his military jacket properly.  
  
“That’s you sorted then,” says the Doctor, wishing he could walk him out to wherever he’s going and beyond, but it’s 1946 and men don’t do that after doing what they just did, unless they’re hoping for a beating. “Thanks.”  
  
“Doctor, it was a pleasure,” says Olivier, and kisses him on the cheek, weirdly tender. “Say hi to your wife for me.”  
  
“Probably won’t,” says the Doctor.  
  
“Fair enough.”  
  
And, he leaves. The Doctor waits until the echoes from his steps up the stairs are gone, before he turns back to the Vault door and leans his forehead against it again.  
  
“Hi,” he says.  
  
Missy taps twice on the door from the inside. He knocks back.   
  
“May I come in?” he asks, and waits. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Hope you all enjoyed. Comments are always appreciated and I am currently taking fic requests on my tumblr (nicolauda).
> 
> Fun fact: After reading this, Yveline pointed out that the song I chose is a very Unusual one for the Master to be singing in a bar in 1946, surrounded by homophobic men. To quote her, "The whole song is about a Parisian girl working as (probably) a waitress, and her joy is being free on Sundays and going dancing and flirting, and for the rest "she doesn't care" hence the title. And then she met a guy with "black eyes and long white hands" and her friends are like "be careful, that guy has no heart, he's a wanderer and poor [....] there's a whole part about "beautiful males kissing you in the neck." And it's absolutely written for the singer to be a woman (things like "i'm happy" are gendered for a she/her). And there's a whole "his arms holding me, his body soft and warm, his mouth kissing me."
> 
> I picked the song because it sounded good and the title translated to "I Don't Care" (more or less) but it really works together well and I'm so chuffed it ended up playing out like that.


End file.
